Ambivalence and Implicit-Explicit Discrepancy Are Not the Same Construct

Abstract

Attitude ambivalence exists to the extent that one has conflict among evaluations – such as possessing both positive and negative feelings – about an attitude object. Ambivalence has been applied theoretically to anticipate the consequences of having implicit, automatic evaluations that differ from explicit, deliberate evaluations. We investigated whether implicit-explicit discrepancies are a form of ambivalence like the presence of positive and negative evaluations or the discrepancy between thoughts and feelings. Across three studies using five attitude objects and two implicit measures, four explicit measures of ambivalence were positively intercorrelated and predicted outcomes anticipated by ambivalence theories. However, implicit-explicit discrepancy was only once related to other ambivalence measures, and showed virtually no prediction of ambivalence-related outcome variables. These results suggest that implicit-explicit discrepancy is not a form of ambivalence as the construct is presently understood.

Keywords: implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, ambivalence, discrepancy